On the first day of my new job, I was introduced to my computer. It had a 17" monitor, a standard keyboard, a floor case - it appeared to be a fast, fabulous machine. That is... until I saw the words "Power Mac" on the case.Having been weaned on a PC, I was quite leery of the Mac. I became familiar with computers while in college, when the 286 was popular and have been following the progress of the PC ever since. I understand how the PC works. When there is a problem, I can usually fix it. The PC is my friend.
This foreign Mac, however, annoyed me. It highlighted the technology level of the company for which I was about to work. It signified that I was going to be doing something new, unique, and extraneous. It reminded me that I wasn't going to be doing a lot of writing, but instead a lot of design work. I've long since heard graphics-oriented people gloat about the power of the Mac, but had found the PC is rather adept these days. I wasn't prepared to take on the challenge of navigating this strange beast.
During those first few weeks, I spent a lot of time yelling at my computer. I banged on it, cursed at it. I often considered throwing it out the window and threatened to do so on many occasions. I assume it was laughing at my empty threats because it still wouldn't do what I asked. It was mostly my lack of patience and understanding that caused such upheaval. I liked the PC. I wasn't familiar with the Mac. I hated the Mac. The Mac must die.
For at least 2 months, I got into several one-sided arguments with the Mac. I reprimanded it because even though it had a civilized 32 megs of RAM, it continually "ran out" of memory. I argued that it should let me eject a disk with a non-existent button on the drive instead of insisting that I use a drop-down menu. I would often look at the "power button" and wonder whose stupid idea it was to put it on the keyboard instead of the computer itself.
It wasn't until I tried to put a Mac formatted disc into a PC that I began to appreciate it. What PC people don't know is that if you put a PC formatted disc into a Mac, the Mac will struggle (usually successfully) to retrieve your file. However, if you put a Mac formatted disc into a PC, the PC says "What's this? I can't read this. Do you want me to format [adjust] the disc so I can read it?" The Mac is much more friendly and accommodating. It's not a snot-nosed computer who thinks it's King. It's a helpful customer service agent who struggles to understand your problems. In fact, the pictures on this site are here only because I can scan an image onto my Mac at work (where the scanner is connected) and save it to a PC formatted disk.
Over time, I began to learn to manipulate the system. I adjusted the use of RAM. I learned to suffer with the primitive eject function. I finally taught myself Quark and PageMaker. I toyed around with the system manager and began to comprehend it.
I can't say that I prefer the Mac. I don't. But, I've long since accepted that I'm doomed to it - at least for now. Though I've no intention of converting to the Mac in this PC-based world of ours, I have a certain amount of respect for it. It's certainly a hell of a lot more polite than the arrogant PC.
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